‘Peacemaker’ Just Isn’t Quite Blowin’ Youngsters Away

In “The Peacemaker,” a macho colonel (George Clooney) teams up with a no-nonsense terrorist expert (Nicole Kidman) to track down stolen nuclear weapons headed for Iran. Rated R.

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“The Peacemaker” is a generic thriller, meaning you get bad guys, good guys, lots of stuff that blows up and a pretty woman looking pretty through all the mayhem.

For many kids who have seen it all before (many times), it yielded one huge ho-hum. Not terrible, but not exactly an eye-popper. In the action field, the stakes apparently keep rising.

“I wanted more,” sighed 12-year-old Sara Frambach of Brea. “It should be better” than other thrillers she’s seen this year.

Sara said the movie began to blur shortly after the beginning, when a Russian general steals a trainload of nuclear warheads and then tries to deliver them to both Bosnian and Iranian terrorists. Although the tension is high as mismatched heroes played by George Clooney and Nicole Kidman are brought in, Sara complained that nothing much inventive happened.

“You knew that [Clooney and Kidman] would fight between them [and then] fight [the terrorists]. But that wasn’t enough” to hold her interest, Sara said.

Didn’t a scene concerning the detonation of a nuclear bomb scare, or at least impress, her?

Sara shrugged and said, “I’ve seen that before too.”

Her friend, David Everen, 11 and also from Brea, nodded. Although that particular passage grabbed him, he said most of the movie was average. He also was confounded by the setting, which shifts from Russia to Bosnia to the border of Iran. When asked if he understood anything about the political conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, David looked blank.

Many adults would have a hard time explaining the turmoil in that region. But when asked if he knew where Bosnia is, David looked blank, finally responding “China?”

So much for global geography.

Another boy, Shawn Reesman, 14, of Yorba Linda, said the film moved laboriously to its finale near the United Nations building in Manhattan. But he did think the final scene, with Clooney and Kidman racing to catch a Bosnian terrorist carrying a bomb in his backpack, was exciting.

“Pretty awesome [when they] found him in the church and then had to try to fix [dismantle] the bomb,” Shawn said.

Every youngster knew, above all, that the picture is a star vehicle for Clooney, familiar to most of them from his starring role on NBC’s “ER.” Opinions were mixed on whether Clooney has the goods to rival, say, Harrison Ford or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“He was pretty cute,” Sara decided, “but too old. He’s good, though.”

David wouldn’t talk about Clooney’s looks but did think he was a reasonably satisfying hero, able to deliver enough thrills. Shawn felt otherwise, saying Clooney would need better movies before he can become a bankable star.

“He didn’t really feel important to me,” Shawn said.

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Parent Perspective: “The Peacemaker” has its share of violence and manufactured catastrophe, but no more than any other recent action film. Armando Sepulveda of Santa Ana said he wouldn’t take his kids, who are 9 and 11, to it but added that he’s especially strict when it comes to sex and violence on TV or the big screen.

Sepulveda says that youngsters eventually become immune to the images and that may affect the way they look at the real world.

“I don’t know for sure about this, but I think that [if they see intense scenes] they start to think the violence isn’t as bad as it really is,” he said. “I’m overly protective, but that’s the way it is.”

The last movie he took his children to?

“ ‘Hercules,’ ” Sepulveda said, “and they liked it a lot.”

* FAMILY FILMGOER, Page 17